Old £1 coin deadline looms but round pounds still given in change

Eirlys Groves said she visited a branch of Tesco where machines gave old out coins as change, and then she was told by shop staff she could not swap them for new ones. The Royal Mint introduced the new £1 coin on 28 March to help crack down on counterfeiting, with one in 30 of the old version estimated to be fake. A Tesco spokeswoman said: "We've been updating our systems ready for the new pound coins, but to help customers who still have the old coins, we'll continue to accept round pounds at our tills and self-service machines for an additional week." The new coin was described as the "Most secure coin in the world", with a string of anti-counterfeiting details, including material inside which can be detected when electronically scanned by coin-counting or payment machines. Efforts to phase out the old £1 coin have also been hampered by companies who returned the new 12-sided replacement by mistake.